Six weeks of Angela alone became three months. Jamal visited for a weekend in November and found the house quieter and cleaner, as if solitude had become a discipline. They cooked together. They watched a movie neither cared about. On Sunday morning Angela made pancakes and said, out of nowhere, "I still love him."
Jamal poured syrup. "I figured."
"Does that disappoint you?"
"It informs me. Disappointment would mean I expected you to stop being a person because I got hurt." He set the bottle down. "I expected you to stop lying. You have. The rest is your life."
Angela reached across the table and squeezed his wrist. "When did you get wise?"
"Overseas. And in a peppermint-tea office. And watching you try." He almost smiled. "Don't get used to it. I still have days where I want to set the championship photo on fire."
"Keep the photo," Angela said. "Burn the days if you need to. Days grow back."
Daryl resurfaced in January with a letter — actual paper, mailed to Rhea's address because he still did not have Jamal's apartment number and would not ask Angela for it. Rhea handed Jamal the envelope like it might explode. Jamal opened it at her kitchen table.
The letter was two pages. It did not beg. It recounted the ninth-grade history project, the tire-changing afternoon with Raymond, the night Jamal asked him to look after Angela, the first evening Daryl stayed too long on the porch and felt something shift that he should have named and fled. It named the cowardice of the seven months. It named the love without asking the love to be forgiven. It ended: I will not contact you again unless you contact me. If silence is what you need for the rest of our lives, I will honor it. If a porch and a cold drink and no speeches is ever possible, I will be there. Either way, you were the best friend I ever had, and I am the reason that sentence is in past tense. — D